Experimental use of mobile apps in physics education

Abstract

Mobile devices have nowadays become familiar instruments of our daily lives. Due to the presence of more and more sophisticated and precise environmental sensors and to the development of more and more user-friendly APPs able to read and analyse data, the interest in the educational context of smartphones, the number of proposals and their quality have rapidly increased in the last years. Our research group in physics education promoted various activities in which students, in the role of “active researchers”, tested some of the available APPs and used them to perform qualitative and quantitative experiments with the aim to improve learning. Here we suggest some significant experimental activity that our partners-student performed with his/her smartphone and low-cost equipment on sound, acceleration, optics and spectroscopy.